Above image of my ancestor Johannes Heinrich Sherz aka Henry Shawers, visualised by Google Gemini AI
Forty years ago I bought a marriage certificate for my great great grandparents, Henry Brooker and Elizabeth Rosina Shawers. There were no 'online' genealogical services then, and in order to find this certificate, I had to personally reference the paper indexes at the registry office in London, and order the paper certificate there. I thought that 'Shawers' was an unusual name, and suspected Huguenot. As bride, she declared on the certificate that her father was a narrow weaver named Henry Shawers. I later found out that a narrow weaver, was a lace weaver, who specialised in making fine lace e.g. for collars and sleeves. Over the forty years, I continued to make occasional attempts to learn more about Henry:
https://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/henry-shawers-a-weaver-in-the-tree
I discovered that he was actually a Swiss-born immigrant, and that he was illiterate, only about 163 cm tall, slight, fair, with blue-grey eyes. But I never could find anything about his Swiss roots. Not his first language, canton, etc. All that I knew was that on record the original names of himself and his father (John Shawers, coppersmith) had been anglicised. To help my search, I built a life time-line for him here:
https://paulbrooker.posthaven.com/henry-shawers-timeline-of-an-ancestor
I had an immigration record of a Henry Shawers from the 11th August 1852, as a passenger on the Lord Warden, that disembarked at Folkestone docks. I found him in prison records and on a census. But no Swiss roots.
Well, AI has helped me to change that situation!
I am now proud to announce that our ancestor Henry Shawers, was born on 26th July 1827 at Köniz, Bern, Switzerland as Johannes Heinrich Sherz, son of Johannes Sherz and his wife nee Rosina Zürcher. Their first language was most probably Bernese Deutsch, and Canton was Bern.
Gemini AI has proposed further ancestry for my Swiss 4th great grandparents, but on that, I am hesitant to claim without discovering more evidence for myself. Gemini has portrayed social decline in recent centuries for the Swiss family in the countryside close to Bern. Napoleonic wars, Independence, civil strife between political fractions. This followed by the price competition of goods being factory manufactured in British cities, and finally, by a potato blight and the 'Hungry Forties'. This was the background to Johannes aka 'Henry' applying for a permit to emigrate, found in the Bernese District Records (Amtsbezirk Bern) from late 1851:
Status: Heinrich Scherz, born 1827, weaver. Action: Granted a Wegzugsurkunde (Departure Deed). Context: The record implies he was traveling "nach England." This perfectly aligns with your August 1852 arrival on the Lord Warden. He likely spent the winter of 1851/52 working his way through France (Boulogne) before crossing to Folkestone.
Gemini also suggests why records later show him moving between London and Brighton. He was almost certainly tramping for work. I asked the AI if it would generate a portrait of my ancestor, and gave it an age, social conditions that he was living through, and a prison description. Gemini gave my the image above.